Probably the second biggest consequence of my first year of learning German was that since I wasn't given the chance to listen to the language I then didn't acquire many of the grammatical forms. These forms were taught explicitly many times, but I never got the chance to internalize them and I think that if I could have listened to the language from day 1 then I might have picked up on the language much sooner (it took me about 3 years to learn the basics that I missed in my first year and in that time I missed much of the advanced material because my language base was weak).
Because of this experience I believe that the listening aspect of language learning should not be taken lightly, even if poor instruction is able to be overcome by the student eventually. I thought our readings this week did a good job of conveying this importance and they provided a lot of useful tools and ideas to get teachers started with meaningful listening activities. I think that as teachers if we are unable to provide our students with authentic listening situations (i.e. in EFL situations this may be difficult) then it is our duty to find good materials for our students. Now that we have the internet in most developed countries we can allow our students to seek out what they are interested in listening to and at the same time they can learn a lot about a language. Another useful media is television/movies, although when we use these for listening activities we should give our recommendations since not every program, film, or internet video/news cast will have useful and authentic language.
Charlie, that is slightly intimidating to hear that your very first encounter in German turned out to be so detrimental to your success in the language. I hope someday I can teach my students listening and help them in the English language rather than have them regress as it seems is what happened to you. Poor Charlie, I am glad it is better.
ReplyDeleteHaha, yes I have overcome adversity to get to the limited German speaking ability that I have today. Mainly it was just that one teacher and I had better instructors after that. I'm pretty sure she had little teaching ability as far as language was concerned, so I'm sure you'll do a lot better as a language teacher (especially since you studied how to teach language).
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read about your L2 learning experience. I think your example helps reinforce the importance of including the skill of Listening into the early stage of the second/foreign language learning process. I felt greatly identified with what you described about your teacher not giving you a chance to listen to native speakers speaking German, since in my first 3 years learning English, the only English i listened to was from my teacher. And no matter how good her English was, of course it was different from the way native English speakers would speak. I therefore felt very lost when i was actually exposed to authentic spoken English afterwards. The principle that language teachers give students ample opportunity to practice listening to the language from an early stage, as you stated in the entry, should then be followed.
ReplyDeleteI have a question, though: if you were able to understand what the native speakers said when you were in Germany, it means your listening ability should be good then?
That's the interesting part Mai. The lack of listening at the beginning of my L2 learning seemed to affect my speech more than my comprehension of the language. After a few years of learning by speaking I couldn't differentiate between what I heard and how I spoke it, even though there was a difference. In other words, I thought I was speaking just as well as I was listening before I went to Germany, but when I got there I found out that even though I seemed to hear the words correctly I could not speak them as correctly.
ReplyDeleteI think it has to do with the fact that my ears were better able to adjust to the native accent than my tongue was. Since what they were saying to me seemed somewhat familiar to what I had heard before, although what I was saying to them must have sounded completely alien to their ears because of my foreign accent. It's not that I didn't understand how to speak the language at all, but that I wasn't close enough to the native dialect for most of them (only the store clerks could really understand me) to be able to make sense of my speech.